Beware of Obamanesia

After months of presidential promises on an executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens (i.e. immigration reform), Obama punted. In June, he put us all on notice that, when he returned from his August vacation, he would use his pen to do what Congress would not do.

A strange thing happened during those weeks of endless golf rounds on Martha’s Vineyard. Public opinion polls tanked on the idea and Senate Democrats, worried about their reelections, began taking the president to task over his plan to by-pass Congress.

Last week, a Rasmussen poll found that 62 percent of likely voters are against the president’s proposed action. Furthermore, 57 percent believe this action to be illegal.

It is little wonder that Senate Democrats in conservative states began heading for the tall grass. It wasn’t long before the president followed.

The White House leaked the decision to put off the action until after the November election just one day after Obama said he planned to make an immigration announcement “soon.” In the president’s vocabulary, soon means until the Senate is safely returned to Democratic control. Soon means he is counting on voters having a case of collective amnesia as they go to the polls.

When Chuck Todd of NBC’s Meet the Press sat down with the president, he suggested that this delay was “political.”

Not so the Obama insisted. He simply wants to make sure “the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted.” One would think he could have done that over the last three months in between adding up his golf scores.

Then there was that emergency trip back to Washington in the middle of his vacation. Oh, forgot! That was to attend a bachelor party for the White House chef. Silly me!

Obama admitted to Todd that the surge of young people crossing our border caused people to think “We’ve got this immigration crisis on our hands.”

You think? In an Oz-like “Don’t look at the man behind the curtain” gesture, Obama went on to explain, “We’ve actually systematically worked through the problem, so that the surge in June dropped in July, dropped further in August. It’s now below what it was last year. But that’s not the impression on people’s minds.”

So the crisis is all in our minds. What about the “Parental Interest Directive” that Obama issued in August 2013, through Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) which prevents Border Patrol agents from apprehending anyone who is caring for a minor child? That’s when the surge began. Is that all in our minds too?

Obama is right about one thing: The number of border crossings did go down in July and August which just happens to be the hottest, most dangerous months of the year. No surprise there. Why risk your life when the “welcome sign” is out with the promise of amnesty and a host of taxpayer funded benefits at the end of the line? What’s the big hurry? Wait until the weather cools.

When Todd suggested that Obama’s delay appears to be because he recognized that “the public wouldn’t support what you did,” The president finally admitted that it, in fact, was political after all. “(T)he truth of the matter is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem. I want to spend some time, even as we’re getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we’re doing this, why it’s the right thing for the American people, why it’s the right thing for the American economy.”

Does anyone in their right mind seriously believe this will help our economy? Despite his pronouncements to the contrary, the economy is still in the tank. More young people are out of work than ever before and Obama wants to flood the country with more unskilled workers.

Nevertheless, putting his amnesty plan off until after the election is a smart political move. The ISIS crisis, which Obama has ignored for the last year, has sucked all of the political oxygen out of the room. Meanwhile, thousands of young people who entered our country illegally have been shipped around the country and are attending our schools at a cost of over $760 million. Anybody seriously think Obama will send them home?

No doubt many voters will blindly go to the polls in November with a case of collective amnesia. In an Obama-like stupor they will return their Democrat senators to Washington who then will roll over and play dead when he finally makes good on his promise to the amnesty advocates.